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Musing Monday No.5: Changes to Kindle Unlimited author payment

Musing Mondays is a weekly meme that asks you to choose one of the following prompts to answer:

I’m currently reading…

Up next I think I’ll read…

I bought the following book(s) in the past week…

I’m super excited to tell you about (book/author/bookish-news)…

I’m really upset by (book/author/bookish-news)…

I can’t wait to get a copy of…

I wish I could read ___, but…

I blogged about ____ this past week…

THIS WEEK’S RANDOM QUESTION: So, apparently Amazon is now going to pay its Kindle Unlimited & Select authors by pages read. You can read more about this {here}. What do you think of this? Share your thoughts!

If you feel like joining in, don’t forget to let me know in the comments, as well as posting a link in A Daily Rhythm’s comments section so other people can have a read of your thoughts!

I’m super excited to tell you that… I’m going to YALC on all three days!

I started this blog just after finding out about YALC, and I didn’t expect to become so absorbed by all this reading and blogging. I definitely didn’t expect to make such great friends. So when I first heard about YALC, I figured I’d just go on the Friday, since it’s a shorter day, and if my introverted brain started to short-circuit, I could easily leave.

Then I started making a few acquaintances, shall we say. I thought to myself, JUST DO IT. So I bought a Friday and a Sunday ticket. Three days would be too much.

Then I found out about the Saturday schedule and was totally bummed. YA: The Next Generation with Samantha Shannon? Being a Girl: Feminism and YA today?! I’m missing these?!

But then the brilliant Ely from A Book So Fathomless noticed a tweet from someone trying to give away their Saturday ticket. I have that ticket now. YES.

Which means that Ely and I will have a whole week together starting this Sunday! BONUS! ^_^

So, apparently Amazon is now going to pay its Kindle Unlimited & Select authors by pages read. You can read more about this {here}. What do you think of this? Share your thoughts!

This is a bit of an odd one for me. I don’t know much about Kindle Select, but I do know about Kindle Unlimited. Basically, readers pay a monthly fee for unlimited, and then they can read up to 10 Kindle Unlimited books at once. Note, this does not mean only 10 books during each month. Readers can read as many as they want, but only have 10 on their devices at any one time.

What does this mean? In a way, it means that readers aren’t buying the books. They’re effectively paying for a library subscription and then borrowing books. How should authors get paid for books that are borrowed instead of bought? I don’t know. I’m not even going to pretend to know.

I’m a consumer, not a creator. From that point of view, I’m a fan of subscriptions/streaming services, as then I’m more likely to read/listen/otherwise consume things I may not have done if I had to outright buy them. I listen to so much on Spotify, for example, that I would not have listened to if I had to buy tracks/albums.

Here are the potential effects of this author payment method (that I can think of).

Positive:

Authors will be encouraged to write truly engaging work that keeps the reader turning pages.

Money will be allocated to authors proportionately, meaning, if you’ve invested time into writing a long novel, you’ll get rewarded more for that.

Negative:

Authors might fill pages with fluff to boost their page numbers and get more money. (However, this can backfire and turn readers away.)

Authors/publishers might start using various tactics to increase page numbers (images, gaps, etc.), much like how some websites split out content onto various pages to increase pageviews.

Short story authors might suffer. But then, maybe that’s fair? Surely, if you were buying books, you’d feel easier about spending £10 on a full-length novel, but you’d feel cheated if you spent that on a short story.

Like I said, I’m not sure what the answer is here. I am not an author or publisher. I am a reader. Just let me have my books.

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